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Just weeks after being roundly criticized for his flippant public attitude about the threat of the coronavirus, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday was transferred into the intensive care unit of a London hospital as he continues to battle the infectious disease.

The decision was made by his medical team after his condition worsened over the course of Monday. The prime minister is understood to be conscious and to have been moved as a precaution in case he needs ventilation.

"Since Sunday evening," said a spokesperson from Johnson's office, "the prime minister has been under the care of doctors at St Thomas' Hospital, in London, after being admitted with persistent symptoms of coronavirus."

"Over the course of this afternoon, the condition of the prime minister has worsened and, on the advice of his medical team, he has been moved to the intensive care unit at the hospital," the statement continued.

His diagnosis came just weeks after Johnson bragged about how he "shook hands with everybody" at a recent hospital visit—a kind of braggadocio that public health experts and others said was both "surprising and concerning."